To seek a resource alternative to petroleum, is currently, a world-wide common concerned topic, due to limited petroleum reserves and emissions of a large amount of greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide (CO2) when processing and employing petroleum, which causes global warming and threatens the living environment of mankind into the future. Advanced nations such as Europe and the United States, etc. have devoted themselves to developing renewable resources as substitutes for petrochemical raw materials and have thought to regulate petrochemical processing products to contain considerable proportions of renewable materials. This shows that there is a need to develop renewable materials and related processing technologies to maintain sustainable development of related industries.
Lignocellulose is a natural polymer with renewability and is mainly composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, wherein lignin is non-petrochemical resource which provides renewable phenolic compounds or aromatic compounds in nature. Cellulose produces levoglucosan through pyrolysis. Performing a fast pyrolysis treatment and chemical treatment on a lignocellulose is the effective methods of transference from a solid state into a liquid state to obtain usable phenolic compounds.
In terms of applications of phenolic compounds, phenol-formaldehyde resin was the earliest to be developed and applied as synthetic resin. Its processed products include adhesives, paints, molding materials, electronic substrates, electrical insulating materials, heat insulating materials, etc. and its hardening resin can further be applied to carbon materials with special functionality after carbonization.
Therefore, if lignocellulose can be effectively used, on one hand, the issue of disposal of agricultural and forestry wastes and lignin wastes can be resolved. On the other hand, it can also provide alternative renewable materials to petroleum.